


red girl

by MargaritaDaemonelix



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Childhood Friends, Gen, also intsys was foolish to not give us the quartet's friendship in canon so here we are, gotta make my own food, intsys tried and look where that landed us: in the sadness gutter, patricia von arundel is a member of those who slither in the dark in this essay i will, sylvain is People Smart, the damned dagger, you cannot tear dimitri and edelgard's friendship from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 12:09:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MargaritaDaemonelix/pseuds/MargaritaDaemonelix
Summary: there are ghosts in the royal palace of Fhirdiad./a story of a friendship, as told through the eyes of one Sylvain Jose Gautier, aged not-quite fourteen.





	red girl

“Dimitri is going to be late,” Felix gripes the moment he walks into the courtyard, sword hoisted over his shoulder lazily. “I still can’t believe you made me wait half an hour in court to go ask King Lambert.”

“You could have asked one of the palace staff,” Ingrid scoffs from where she’s cleaning her spearhead with an old rag. “They’re not busy with court all the time.”

Felix makes a very sour face. “Ugh, the staff.  _ Oh Felix, _ ” he minces, wrinkling his nose and nipping the air with his free hand,  _ “young master Fraldarius, are you training with your brother again?” _ He makes one final mocking gesture, and drops his hand. “I  _ would, _ if he actually had  _ time _ .”

Sylvain laughs as he leans back against the wall, hands behind his head as he grins. “Dimitri keeps bailing on us,” he says all-too knowingly. “This is what, the fourth time this week?”

“He’s probably just attending additional studies,” Ingrid says with a frown. “If there’s anyone who doesn’t take being royalty lightly, it has to be him.”

“I’m not talking about his studies,” Sylvain scoffs. “C’mon, you guys don’t think he’s getting into drama? Tussling with someone in the palace?”

“Are we even talking about the same Dimitri here?” Felix says, eyebrow raised. “He barely even talks to  _ us, _ much less to the palace staff.”

“I don’t think it’s one of the palace staff,” Sylvain says, chest puffed up proudly. “I think there’s a girl.”

* * *

Days in the palace are spent in an endless spiral of fun and games. Sylvain can barely remember to breathe between the laughter and stealing apples from the kitchens and sparring with the others. He opens his mouth and inhales slices of pheasant in rich gravy and baked pike and sweet, sweet apple pie, and in exchange he gives his brightest smiles and loudest laughter.

It’s only a quarter hour after his mother has tucked him into bed that he slips out, silent and nothing more than a shadow in the hallways. If the guards see him pass  _ (that flash of orange hair) _ they make no effort to stop him, and the one stationed outside Dimitri’s room even steps aside to let him in.

Felix is already sitting crosslegged at the foot of Dimitri’s massive bed, soberly munching a pilfered persimmon. Dimitri himself is reading by candlelight, parsing some massive book of poetry or other. Sylvain makes himself comfortable, lying down next to Felix and sticking his feet into the warmer parts of the blankets. A few minutes later, Ingrid slips through the door with silk ribbons in her hair and a basket of slightly stale bread in her arms.

“Do all of you have middle names?” Dimitri suddenly asks, as Sylvain brushes the crumbs off his nightgown and deliberately presses his nose into Felix’s leg. In retaliation, Felix ruffles his hair, though not unkindly. “Mine is Alexandre.”

“Brandl,” Ingrid says, voice muffled sleepily in one of Dimitri’s pillows. “Mother says it means  _ one who walked through fire. _ ”

“Hugo,” Felix says, or really snorts. “Doesn’t suit me, I know.”

Sylvain beams. “Mine is Jose,” he says proudly. “It’s a derivative of my grandfather’s name.”

Dimitri nods sagely. “Do you think having a middle name is stupid?” he ponders, and something in his tone tells Sylvain that he’s quoting someone else’s words. “It feels like something that stuffy old politicians like to announce out loud.”

“Oh, like  _ bow down, peasants, Felix Hugo Fraldarius is here? _ ” This is met by a giggle from Dimitri and an amused snort from Ingrid. “You’re right. It  _ is _ stupid.”

“When have you ever met a stuffy old politician who talks like that?” Sylvian laughs, punching his friend playfully. “Just how much time have you been spending in the palace listening to political meetings without me?”

Felix just swats himself and sticks his tongue out.

“I can confirm that some stuffy old politicians do speak like that,” Dimitri muses, closing his massive book and setting it on the nightstand. “I don’t like councils. They’re stupid.”

“More stupid than middle names?”

“More stupid than middle names,” he confirms. “Last week Lord Rowe got in a spat with Father over  _ bread. _ How much more stupid can it be?”

“Bread,” Sylvain repeats, and they all turn to the basket that Ingrid brought and laugh.

Much later, in the dead of the night when the rest of the palace is silent, and Ingrid has sunk even further into Dimitri’s pillows and Felix is snoring with his head on Sylvain’s leg, Sylvain nibbles the last slice of persimmon as Dimitri continues to mince through his book. The candle splutters, and the young prince just sighs and flips the page. “Are you trying to finish the entire book tonight?” Sylvain teases.

“I shirked during the daytime when I was supposed to be reading,” Dimitri explains sheepishly, before sighing. “Sylvain, do you think it’s pretentious to have a middle name? Please, tell me honestly.”

Sylvain entertains the question for a moment. “No,” he finally says. “It’s just a name, isn’t it? Just a way to identify someone. There are people who prefer to be called their middle names.”

“Of course,” Dimitri says. “It’s just… I spoke to someone recently about the practice, and I think it’s interesting. Having to pick  _ two _ names for someone seems intimidating.”

“More intimidating than the thought of running a nation?” Sylvain teases.

Dimitri makes a face. “No, that’s still worse.”

The candle flickers again, and Felix shifts uneasily in his sleep, murmuring something inaudible before he snuggles back up against Sylvain. “You should get some sleep too, Dimitri,” Sylvain says, reaching out to stop the younger boy from moving onto the next page. “Reading can wait until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Dimitri agrees, and sets his book aside and blows out the candle. “Good night, Sylvain.”

“Good night, Dimitri,” Sylvain says, tucking him and Felix and Ingrid into the duvets before laying himself down next to them, knowing fully well that he’s going to be yelled at by at least three adults in the morning. That’s all good and well; his friends have never seemed happier.

(Dimitri strikes up a match, some time later, and relights the candle and hauls the book back into his lap. Sylvain turns a blind eye, and hopes his friend won’t stay up too late.)

* * *

There are ghosts in the royal palace of Fhirdiad.

Sylvain does not visit the palace often, but he hears the rumours from Ingrid's letters penned with a slanted hand, from Felix's tired drawl as he throws himself into another practice round, from Dimitri's haunted gaze and lifeless touch. Every time his father returns from Fhirdiad, he brings a wave of conflicting stories with him:  _ the lady. The Princess. The man who brought them. _

But Sylvain has never been afraid of ghosts, and despite Felix's insistence, he's not afraid of seeking them out. There's a spring in his step and apples in his pockets, he's almost fourteen years of age, and he can wield a lance with frightening speed and can take down teenagers five years older than him in a fight and he isn't afraid of ghosts.

Felix calls him stupid for always chasing something. He's always chasing girls, always chasing ghosts, always chasing dreams that are just the slightest out of hand. "And because you're always chasing someone," he grumbles, wrapping up the newest scrape on Sylvain's elbow with a bandage, "I always end up having to chase after you."

"Why," Sylvain teases, "am I that interesting?"

Felix scowls and turns an interesting shade of red. "No, because I have to patch up your wounds every time you throw yourself into a pond and scrape yourself on the rocks!"

Ingrid is less open about her thoughts. Behind the training of a perfect wife she hides her lance, and behind the deadly swing of her lance she hides her shame. She animates herself in the castle courtyard, hidden away from the shying eyes of the public. There is anger in every time she effortlessly slices through a training dummy, anger at the daughter she wants to badly to be, anger at herself for falling short every time.

She doesn’t believe in ghosts. Maybe it keeps them from haunting her; maybe it’s more than just a self-defence. Sylvain doesn’t loop her into adventuring when she’s so hard on herself.

(Because at the end of the day, Sylvain is not as dim-witted as Felix says he is. Because Sylvain chases happiness, and hopes his friends will chase their own.)

He finds a ghost on one trip to the capital. Felix is up north with his family, and Ingrid is stuck in Galatea forcing herself to sew frilly ruffles into her dresses, but Dimitri’s still up in Fhirdiad and so it’s not nearly as lonely.

Still, Sylvain finds himself alone most of the time, with Dimitri caught up in all the trials and tribulations of being the crown prince. In a busy bustling palace, no one has time for a small boy thirteen years old, and definitely no one has time to watch him take off through the palace with a sketchbook and charcoal and the intention to explore every nook and cranny.

And maybe everyone’s just a skeptic, but when Sylvain asks his father about the crying in the library wing, the crying that sounds just a little too much like a girl his own age, the response he gets is a hush:  _ don’t speak, Sylvain, children are meant to be seen and not heard, especially not in the palace. _ The underlying tone speaks volumes more:  _ you musn’t know about the ghosts, Sylvain. _

He goes searching nonetheless, and on one such occasion he dares to venture through the back of the library, into the section with all the heavy tomes that his parents insist he can’t read yet, and sits with his back to the wall behind a bookshelf as the girl behind the wall sniffles alone in the darkness.

There’s a shuffle through the library, and Sylvain tucks his feet in and dares to peer out. A flash of blonde hair against blue fabric, and then Dimitri is slipping through the cracks of a hidden passageway between the bookshelves and disappearing into some other world.

The crying slows to a stop as Dimitri’s murmuring takes over, and it’s as if he’s changed entirely. Sylvain has known Dimitri for a lifetime, or at least that’s what he once thought, because the voice behind the bookshelf is much too gentle for a boorish, boar-ish prince. Slowly, his muffled voice is joined by a canary of a girl, weakened by unknown sorrows and a storm of emotions inside but remaining strong.

And Sylvain curls up next to the bookshelf, and wondered when oh-so transparent Dimitri started keeping secrets.

* * *

There is a ghost in the palace of Fhirdiad, and her name is Patricia.

Sylvain catches sight of her skirts swinging as she rounds a corner, and beneath the royal blue velvet she strides in smart red boots, a splash of crimson in an ocean of azure. He spots the snipped ends of her embroidery silk in the windowsills, like tiny blood drops against the ebon metal left hastily. He hears her voice echo down the hallways, and all he can think of is that woman is red, red, red.

He doesn’t know who Patricia is, but when he asks his father he gets the same reaction as when he asked about the crying girl, and that in itself says more than he needs. You see, everyone forgets that Sylvain is fourteen and has eyes and ears all across the palace, that he is much smarter than he lets on because Miklan already won’t look at him and what’s more painful than that?

That’s how Sylvain sees through the veil of the ghost and sees the woman behind, actually: he finds Miklan’s harsh glare in Patricia’s graceful smile and his bitter words in the way her words drip with honey. She clings so tightly to King Lambert when they sit down for dinner, and Sylvain sees his brother’s anger and pleas.

You see, Sylvain is not like his book-smart brother, but he is people-smart. There are things he realizes much faster than even his father does, like how his mother cries because she is so, so scared for Miklan, and how Dimitri hides a ghost, and how Patricia walks with too much pomp and circumstance for a woman of Faerghus.

Sylvain watches and observes. The girl-ghost, he figures, has to be Patricia’s daughter, for who else would sport the same hair of ash brown? Dimitri’s father—the king, he reminds himself—is so entirely enamoured with her, staring at her like a lovelorn boy during meals and in the few minutes they can afford to have contact during the day. The glassy look in King Lambert’s eyes as he seeks out Patricia’s embrace like it’s his panacea—

It doesn’t feel right.

This is how Sylvain decides that Patricia isn’t a ghost: Dimitri runs to her laughing, and she gathers him into her arms, but her smile never reaches her eyes. She makes trips to the library, into the section with all the tomes, and the only thing that seems to come from it is a lot of angry yelling. There are pins prodded into the walls near the places where she likes to do her embroidery. She speaks words sweeter than any sugar, and yet every single letter that comes from her lips has the taste of blood.

So red becomes blood, and a ghost named Patricia becomes flesh. Sylvain knows that he shouldn’t know about her, and so when Felix joins him in the capital a week later, and Ingrid the week after that, he doesn’t say anything to them, doesn’t grab their hands and lead them on hunts for ghosts.

Maybe it’s better this way, after all.

* * *

The echoes of the girl become louder and louder, and Sylvain hears them in the courtyard as he goes to visit Felix one afternoon.

Finally, he can put a face to the ghost, or rather a vague set of colours: a petite girl about the same height as itty-bitty Dimitri, hair plucked up in two ash brown pigtails. She’s laughing as she grabs Dimitri’s hand and they spin and spin in a whirlwind of blue and red.

They sound so happy, and all Sylvain can do is watch from behind a pillar in absolute reverent silence. Dimitri is  _ laughing, _ and even though the girl calls him out for stepping on her feet she’s laughing too. Like birds in flight, the wind lifts them up so they can relish in this secret moment, tucked away in the courtyard.

“Arm up!” the girl laughs, and Dimitri yelps but they sway around and dance the other way, and then one of them yells out as they go tripping over a tree root and into the soft grass at the base of the willow tree. The sound of sweet childhood innocence fills the air as they roll into the grass and laugh.

“You’re getting better at dancing,” the girl says. Her voice is surprisingly clear, like tolling bells to Ingrid’s glass harmonica voice. “But you still keep forgetting to lead with your right foot!”

“I’ll never be as good as you,” Dimitri gripes, though there’s humour in his tone. “You might as well give upon me!”

“Then you just gotta practice more, dummy!”

There’s silence, then the girl  _ shrieks _ as Dimitri yanks a handful of grass out of the lawn and throws it into her hair. “Ew, there’s going to be bugs on me!”

Sylvain slips away before he can watch Dimitri get socked in the stomach for throwing grass. That’s all cool; the two in the courtyard are too distracted with grass and bugs and hair like silk to notice him disappearing into the palace once again.

“Tsk, you’re late,” Felix tells him when he arrives, before making a face and sitting him down to dust off his knees. “Lady Seiros above, what the hell have you been doing? Did someone bowl you over in the courtyard or something?”

“Something,” Sylvain agrees faintly.

* * *

“Sylvain,” says Dimitri, “if you had to give something to someone who is going away, what would you give them?”

They’re lazing around in the afternoon, in the kind shade of the willow tree in the courtyard. Ingrid is out picking daisies so she can finish braiding her crown; Felix is asleep, his waistcoat folded neatly and tucked under his head. Dimitri has plucked all the petals out of one of Ingrid’s daisies; they lay in a neat white halo around him. He casts away the stem with a lonely petal remaining.

“Depends,” Sylvain says, with all the wisdom of a boy who is two years older. “Are they from around here?”

“No,” Dimitri says, and looks like he has more to say, and says nothing.

Sylvain doesn’t have to pry in the slightest to know that this is about his ghost, the girl who lives locked in the room behind the library. The girl-ghost who is almost certainly Patricia’s daughter, and so that makes her flesh and blood too. “Hmm, what do they like?” he prods. “Chocolates? Fancy clothes? Fish?”

Dimitri makes a face and shrinks back. “Fish?”

Sylvain flaps an errant hand at him. “I met a girl who was obsessed with fish once,” he says. “Long story. I’ll tell you some other time. What does your friend like?”

And it’s complicated, and Sylvain can tell by the way Dimitri shrinks away at the word  _ friend. _ Because  _ friend _ is a word reserved for Ingrid’s justice delivered cold and Felix’s fond pretense of ignorance and Sylvain’s brotherly teasing and the way Dimitri used to shyly bring stolen sticky buns when they had the chance to play together. Because Dimitri is the crown prince; he does not make  _ friends _ , only allies and future allies.

So when Dimitri quietly answers “not my friend,” Sylvain can’t fault him.

“Hmm. Maybe then you want to give them something unique to Faerghus.” He thinks for a moment, and comes up with something that might just work. “Hey, you know that old saying about gifting someone a dagger? The one about using it to cut a path to a better future?”

The idea immediately brightens Dimitri’s expression. “Oh, you’re right! Thank you, Sylvain. That’s a very good idea.”

“You better make it worth it,” Sylvain advises, before allowing his grin to blossom. “And this acquaintance of yours better be worth it, too, if they’re getting a special gift from  _ the crown prince. _ Who’s the lucky person?” He gasps dramatically, pressing a hand to his chest. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

Dimitri goes very,  _ very _ red immediately. “No, absolutely not,” he says, voice a strangled squawk. It’s fun to get him riled up like this, especially when he’s usually so composed. He’s positively red now, to the tips of his ears. “Why would I have a girlfriend?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sylvain says teasingly, “the crown prince? Having a girlfriend? Scandalous!”

At that moment, Ingrid shows up, arms full of daisies that she promptly drops on the ground. “What are you boys going off about now?” she chides, as Dimitri hastily sweeps away the petals from the daisy he’d torn apart earlier. “Dimitri, you’re bright red. What happened?”

“Tell Sylvain to stop poking fun,” Dimitri protests. “I feel as though I am being slandered!”

“It’s not slander if it’s the truth,” Sylvain counters.

Ingrid opens her mouth to scold them both, but it doesn’t matter anyways, because then Felix sits bolt upright and sneezes hard enough to blow away the daisies, and by the time Sylvain has helped get him a tissue, the thought of the girl in red has been lost to laughter.

* * *

Sylvain meets her too late.

He realizes something is going on when Dimitri doesn’t come out to spar with Ingrid that afternoon, when the guards block off the library before he can show Felix that one book he’s been reading back home. There is something grief-stricken in the way Dimitri slips past him in the hallway, furiously rubbing away at his eyes. There is something so very cruel in the way Patricia sweeps her way through the castle so proudly.

And the canary is silenced, and the dancing stops, and Dimitri slinks back to his own room like a defeated, lost little sheep and locks Felix and Ingrid out. Sylvain listens for the yelling of a mother-gone-wrong, and finds only silence and honey-sweet words whispered in the ear of a king. The echoes of a girl-now-ghost are now just a draft in an empty hall, taking away dust and tears and long-faded laughter with it.

With the last of the happiness and the last of the summer’s apples tucked in his pockets, Sylvain slips away from the chaos and the crying, and takes off through the lonely halls of the royal palace of Fhirdiad again. Somehow, the corridors are colder than the worst winter, the ice of broken relationships creeping across the walls and floors.

He doesn’t notice her at first, because  _ for once _ he’s not chasing faraway things, but there are footsteps like falling feathers and sniffles too fragile. The whispers from the court echo in:  _ where is the princess? Where is she? Where has she gone? She must be returned. _ The muffled weeping from Dimitri’s room echoes out:  _ it isn’t fair. She is my friend. She shouldn’t have to go away. _

The girl stands at the end of the hallway, frozen in her crying. She holds Sylvain’s stare with frightening amounts of ice, even as tears pour from her eyes. She looks to be Adrestian, and quite petite, and much,  _ much _ too young.

She clutches a sheathed dagger to her chest, like it means the world to her. It has a handle wrapped in royal blue. Her hands are shaking.

Sylvain reaches into his pocket, and hands her an apple.

She stares at him, frozen in shock, and takes it. Nods once, as if in understanding. Shoves it in her bag, and runs away before her face can crumple.

(Disappears, again.)

The palace quiets down after that. Patricia returns from the stables after the carriage bound for Enbarr leaves, and mops away the false tears and returns to her chambers. Dimitri’s room goes very, very quiet, and soon Sylvain is able to convince a matron with a spare key to let him, Felix and Ingrid in.

“Is he okay?” Ingrid asks, running her fingers down Dimitri’s hair. The prince is fast asleep, curled up around a book of etymology stained with tears. “He looks exhausted.”

“He’s probably just having a bad day,” Sylvain says. “It happens to all of us.”

Felix stares at him. “That’s the last thing I would have expected you to say,” he muses. “Knowing you, it would have been something like  _ he just got rejected by a girl _ or something.”

(A heart so full of love can only be so strong—)

“Whatever it is, he’ll be fine,” Sylvain says. “It’s Dimitri. He’s strong like that.”

* * *

(There is a girl in red, in the peripherals of his vision like a lonely ghost.

Her name is Edelgard von Hresvelg, and she spreads her eagle wings and brings her ax down and shatters the earth with her deadly, deadly dance.)

**Author's Note:**

> for some ungodly reason this is my first venture into this fandom  
i've had this theory for a while that patricia/edelgard's mum was replaced by an agarthan during the chaos of the insurrection of the seven, so it might make more sense to read it from that perspective (WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OTHER HRESVELG CHILDREN, INTSYS)  
also i am LIVID that there was no canonical scenes with the Quartet of dimitri, sylvain, felix and ingrid, and any friendship quartet is my fucking jam, so of course i had to make my own food
> 
> i'm @TequilaFreeeee on twitter, feel free to drop by and give me a holler!


End file.
